Obsolescence and Durability
If marketers expect a product to become obsolete, they can design it to last for a specific lifetime. If a product will be technically or stylistically obsolete in five years, many marketers will design the product so it will only last for that time. This is done through a technical process called value engineering. An example is home entertainment electronics which tend to be designed and built with moving components like motors and gears that last until technical or stylistic innovations make them obsolete.
These products could be built with higher-grade components, but they are not because this would impose an unnecessary cost on the purchaser — see overengineering. Value engineering will reduce the cost of making the product and lower the price to consumers. A company will typically use the least expensive components that satisfy product’s lifetime projections.
The use of value engineering techniques have led to planned obsolescence being associated with product deterioration and inferior quality. Vance Packard claimed that this could give engineering a bad name, because it directed creative engineering energies toward short-term market ends rather than more lofty and ambitious engineering goals.
Read more about this topic: Planned Obsolescence